Thursday, December 24, 2015

It is that
time of year once again. A time of reflection, a time to look back on the year
past, and forward to the year to come… a time to, well, to reacquaint once self
with those strange people in your house who seem to be always hanging around,
eating your food and asking for money… and botherin’ you about things that you and I
know are simply not as interesting, or important as anything you do when they
leave you alone.

But that’s
what these dead of the winter days of gatherings & gift giving, family
& friends and dining & drinking… (til you puke up multicolored fruit
cake… which BTW, IS real) are for, right?

As for Flyin
the Deadly Skies of EVE… (or Elite Dangerous or even Star Citizen) Well, there
have been a lot of changes since I last posted a Saturnalia update. HBHI has
been mothballed for a few years now, an alt of mine holds sway there, all on
her lonesome…

We had all
joined HELPeR a corp we have been close friends with for as long as I have been
in EVE. Then my son, AI, went on sabat… sold off a goodly portion of his stuff
(gave me some major ISKies) and mothballed AI.

We had a
rollicking good time for a number of months… old friends, new members, moved to
a C4, ran C5 sites, made some mad ISK and roamed lowsec for PVP… then the usual
summer malaise seemed to take hold, however at this time it still remains
basically unbroken. I log in alone, run gas and Frostlines and log off… alone.

Tsra is
keeping the POSes fueled and will until the corp either starts loggin’ back in
or decide to unanchor and move out to Empire for a spell.

For me I went
to my first EVE Meet, then another… started my first real alt. We had Seekers
in Hisec and the advent of the Drifters. I started playing Elite Dangerous and
even bumbled around Star Citizen a bit… that added to this and that IRL and I
have not been logging in nor blogging as much as I used to.

For EVE we have had
a HUGE number of changes… lots of new ships, really massive changes to nullsec
Sov and Force Projection, some scandals and lots of drama both in the game and
in the meta. We have gone from Major Expansions with point patches to no
Expansions but a steady 6 week roll out schedule, and now we are back to Major
Expansions with point patches again… Proteus, Tiamat, Scylla, Mosaic, Carnyx, Aegis,
Galatea, Vanguard, Parallax to… well, whatever you call the Dec 8th
patchspansion.

2015 has
been a strange year for EVE as I am sure most will agree…Here’s hoping 2016
brings as much excitement, change and possibility as 2015 did… as the Chinese
saying goes,

“May you live in Interesting
Times.”

So grab a
Grolsh from the Beer Tree out on the ramp, pull up a seat and let's talk
spaceships... =]

* Module Tiericide on Remote Repair
Modules. More details can be found here.

This is of interest to me
obviously… but I am not a number guy so I usually wait for the changes to land
then test ‘em out and see what I will see. However I am interested in how all
this, “…remote armor, shield and hull
reps all now have falloff (this falloff reduces effectiveness as you get
further from your target)” will affect us in site running… and PVP.

Exploration:

* The presence of Drifter wormholes around
New Eden has been increased.

Lots of changes to exploration,
but I don’t do a lot of that so…

Graphics:

* Visual Damage System - Your ship
will now display a shield when taking damage, if your attacker gets through
your shields you will see localized armor damage.

Have seen the shields vids and
prayed for something like it for YEARS!! Am very pleased to read that we will
also see armor damage after shields drop… Yeah CCP!

* The battle between light and dark is over,
the brightness slider has been implemented into the settings menu!

As long as this means I can
adjust the brightness of those godsawful gas clouds in sites… then just Oh
Hellz YES!!

* The following visual effects have been
renovated:

Ship
& Drone engine boosters

Warp
Entry

Wormhole
Jump

ECCM

ECM
Burst

Sensor Booster

Stasis Web

Survey Scanner

Tracking Booster

Smart Bombs (EMP, Graviton, Photon, Plasma)

* Your ship will now accumulate dirt and
grime over time. (Note: You can clean your ship’s hull through the fitting
window.)

All the above just simply good
stuff, ‘nough said. And I know, I know… Kill
Marks… Look, I’m usually a Logibro or Hero Tackle so when WE get Kill Marks
for assists then I’ll care.

Modules:

* Three new ice Mining Lasers usable only on
Expedition frigates are now available.

* The Micro Jump Field generator is now available.
More details can be found here.

* Missile Disruption modules are now
available. More details can be found here.

Good, mmmmmm... good…

Missions & NPCs:

Science & Industry:

EVE has Missions & NPCs and Science and...? (you know...)

Ships:

* The brand new Expedition Frigate
known as the Endurance has been released. More details regarding the Endurance
can be found here.

* Four brand new Command Destroyers,
which can utilize the new Micro Jump Field generators have been released. More
details regarding the Command Destroyers can be found here.

* Four brand new Tech II Logistics Frigates
have been released. More details on these ships can be found here.

All of these just make we wet.

Skills:

Books for teh new ships of course…

SKINs:

Some care, me not so much.

Technical:

* Grid boxes have been increased in size
from 250km to 7800km.

This is huge… I mean HUGE… and
not just 7800km huge either. HOLEE SHEET! Logged on, setup an all-fast-nothing-else interceptor and burned hard north... new off grid safe at the POS?? 13,395km... Yup... we do shit BIGGER in holes!

User Interface:

* Visual update to probes and d-scan cone.

* Added an icon to the Watch List for when
you are targeting and have targeted a member.

* Interbus Ship Identification System has
been renamed.(interesting… LOL)

* Broadcast section of the fleet window is
expanded by default.

All good worthwhile changes.

FIXES:

Audio:

* Expanded the advanced audio Atmosphere
slider to include Incursion system entry sounds.

I will admit to being of a
somewhat ‘grr goons‘ turn of mind, though definitely a lower case version more
like grr goons lite™, nothing like the full bore Gobblinish “GRR GOONS” mindset
nor of the far moar tinfoil & trollish “GRR RMTing GOONS” of the Dimmy
Snetterton set.

My personal take on Mittens,
Goons and their antics is more based on the simple fact that I just don’t like
liars and cheats and scammers on general principle and the new Viceroyalty
Pogrom is nothing more than the same play that was made on my home corp wayyy back
when we were just noobs. That was nothing moar than a straightforward EVE style
Hisec WarDec Protection Racket. This Viceroyalty thing is just the same racket all
dressed up and being played out on a much larger stage for moar ISK in Null
& Lowsec.

While I am at best luke warm
about Goons the majority of the time, and at worst case a little worried about
their impact on our great game every so often based on specific cases I have always
said that no matter what else you say about them, they do create content and as
Bad Guys go, we could have far worse… and EVE needs good Bad Guys.

“EVE needs ‘good’ Bad Guys?” “Are
you fuked in the head?” I hear your frown and mumble… Yes, and No.

Think about it… in all other
MMO’s (that I know of) the Bad Guys are normally fairly powerful, hard but not
impossible to kill, NPC “Bosses” and their less powerful though usually numerous
horde of mindless minions. And yes we do have Sansha Koveki, and Bloody Omar
and all the somewhat LOLable thousands upon thousands of pirate and faction NPC’s
we take contracts on to kill for their bounties, but none of them, not even the
Sleepers or hell, not even the Drifters are “The Big Bad Guys” of EVE. NPCs are
not and cannot be the Final Dungeon Boss in our game… no, in EVE it is all
about the players, about Emergent Player Behavior, and so man must fulfill this
role…

In New Eden, nihil inimicius quam sibi ipse is a cold hard truth. In EVE Man must
be his own worst enemy, we have no one else. We have to provide our own Dungeon
Bosses with their Horde of Minions to revile and strive against. And Mittens
and his gang are just that, and they don’t even just accept the role… they play
it with dedication, serious effort and, one must say, with gusto.

Why? Well… somebody has to.

As I understand it, Goons did not
originally start off as Bad Guys in EVE. From what I have read and heard they
started out as most of us do, players just playing the game. Not intending to
be asshats or Bad Men much less THE Bad Guys of EVE. Yes they started out
centered around a core of players from the Something Awful forums and that
became a ’thing’ for them.

Being “Community Born”, as
Mittens calls it has obviously contributed to their disassociation from the “EVE
Born”, IE the rest of us. This has helped to foster a mindset of “us” against
“them” with ‘them’ being everyone not a Goon. And that made it far far
easier for the Mittani to take the steps into spying and subversion and for the
line troops to follow he who became Darth Mittens and with him to embrace the
Dark Side, and all that goes with it.

Their descent into evil was
something that also grew out of the war against BoB and in general their desire
and the fight to take and hold Sov in nullsec. And yes, once they decided to put
on the Black Hat of the Bad Guys, they surely didn’t do it in half measures now
did they? No, in for a penny, in for a pound as they say. And so, here we are…
living and dying in a New Eden that has real life booygmen… and this is not,
necessarily, a bad thing.

I had a discussion with a friend
and co-worker who has been a long time WoW player and who joined us in EVE
about 6 months ago because WoW had become, well, boring for him. He gave it a
good try, had me and another co-worker who also joined us in EVE, pulling for
him. I gave him the PLEX I got for him subbing, so ISK was not a major issue
for him… But EVE is a niche game, a very niche game, and he is simply not a
highly social or a PVP centric player. Now he is flying in Elite Dangerous and
while he is enjoying it, he says he still struggles to find a reason to play… One
of, if not the most important aspects for gamers about gaming is why do we
play?

For most games it comes as Instant
Gratification in the form of an adrenaline rush from the Dev created content. But
EVE is not an Instant Gratification game, it is the Long Game… but
interestingly because Risk and Loss are Real in EVE, the adrenaline rush in PVP
and sometimes even in PVE combat can be far far better. We all know the main problem
with Dev created content is that it takes veteran players just days or even
hours to burn through content that can take years to create, and then, no
matter how good it is, it’s over. Look at WoW’s last big expansion… My friend
completed it in one week… just one godsdamned week!

In EVE we need the Devs to care
for and maintain the sandbox, to keep the sand clean, to craft the NPC Lore, to
keep making the toys we need and want to build and play with, and destroy. We
also do need them to create the work we do… the mining, market, BPOs, missions,
sites, belts and interactions with the NPCs that inhabit this great verse with
us… We do all of this in order to make the ISK we need so we can afford to lose
what we fly when we fight. ALL of the Dev created content in EVE is the
background and sets and props we use in living out our stories, creating our
history, creating the player’s Lore.

No group of Devs could ever begin
to write or code the Lore and content we MAKE every single day. And say what
you will… the Mittani, Goonswarm Federation and their Allies are creating Lore
and Content in EVE… Lore and Content for all those who want to get involved and
take part on either side, Lore and Content for those who will work to profit
from it and Lore and Content for those who will change their plans and game play
to avoid it…

After my friend completed the new
WoW content in one week he asked himself, “Now
what do I do?” “Run it again? but
why? for what reason, to what purpose?” And that is the crux issue here.
Why do we log on? what are we fighting for? what do we get out of it?

Them as what follow me...

Graphiti...

Round and round we go...

Fav Post Bytes...

"Maybe we're not that different after all and I have my own reality to get to grips with."Absence of Substance

Now THAT is wisdom...

We are, each and alone, the absolute center of our subjective 'verse... this is the way of life.To see another's POV as if it were your own... this is the way of truth...To allow that some others have POVs you cannot and will never understand, and yet accept them as they are, this is the way of acceptance...To kill them all without rancor or anger, but in brotherhood... this is the way of EVE.

This Is What We DO!!!

POD Locked

We're Soooo Bad at Hisec!

New Odysseyt Wormhole Jump Animations

EVE Forever, the Second Decade

EVE Easter Egg

Quafe's The One

Negato:

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